Beloved Virginia Beach teacher memorialized with lending library at Parkway Elementary
Students and teachers were trying not to cry on the last day of school Friday at Parkway Elementary in Virginia Beach. Instead, they were trying to celebrate a beloved teacher — a life lost too soon.
Almost a year after she died from cancer, the late teacher’s students, colleagues and loved ones gathered Friday morning for a dedication ceremony of the Reneka Evans Memorial Lending Library.
Evans, 42, worked at Parkway for 15 years. The third-grade teacher had no children but supported each student as if they were hers. She had such a knack for calming tantrums, stirring motivation and fostering community that other staff named it the “Reneka Effect.”
The lending library is painted in school colors — red and white — with a glass face and two shallow shelves inside. It’s perched in front of the school on a post that reads: “Take a book. Leave a book.”
The school community hopes this little box will spread the same love and joy for reading as the person for whom it is memorialized. The coronavirus pandemic shuttered Parkway Elementary in mid-March. Evans died in July.
“We never got to say goodbye and celebrate her life and her exceptional teaching,” Principal Krista Barton-Arnold told the crowd. “Today we are going to do that.”
Under the mid-morning sun, students and staff took turns filling the lending library’s cabinet with some of the hundreds of books Evans collected during her tenure at the school. Now these books can be available to all, any time of the year.
In went some of her favorite titles. The Jolly Postman, Dr. Seuss’s ABCs, Ramona the Brave.
At the base of the box, students also placed rocks they painted. Sky blue, sunshine yellow and lime green. Among them, a rock painted pink, decorated with flowers and lettered: “A life that touches others goes on forever.”
A Kempsville High School student, Ella McCullough, built the lending library as a community service project.
Evans’ aunt, Cassandra Futrell, attended the ceremony. She said she will remember Evans’ unwavering zest for life. Christina Hutchins, a Parkway special education teacher and a longtime friend of Evans, recalled her compassion, her creative flair and her liveliness on the basketball court.
Shawn Hines Sr., Evans’ pastor at Full Restoration Ministries in Norfolk, noted her dedication to helping others and the energy she poured into the church’s youth programs.
“She will forever live on here at Parkway,” he said.
When children reach for a book from this red and white cabinet, it will hopefully remind them of Evans, cheering them on.
Olivia George, olivia.george@virginianmedia.com
